Ex-South Park Boss Seeks Funny Shorts at Inkubation

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Ex-South Park Boss Seeks Funny Shorts at Inkubation

Jennifer Howell produced *South Park *and ran Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Important Films production company. Now she's hoping to nurture a fresh crop of animation auteurs as head of 20th Century Fox Television's new Inkubation unit.

The concept, according to this week's announcement from Fox: Howell and her team will pay animators to create two-minute cartoons. Clips that get laughs and show promise will then be fleshed out as full half-hour pilots with a shot at making it onto Fox's primetime schedule. Inkubation plans to get extra mileage from its comedy content by showcasing the shorts via digital distribution.

The new Fox division is currently negotiating more than a dozen deals. It remains to be seen if Inkubation's shorts-first, pilots-later strategy, designed to cut back on expensive duds, will uncover the next Matt Groening (Futurama), Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) or Mike Judge (King of the Hill).

But there's no question that funny people can prove their merit in a matter of minutes.

South Park was famously spawned by Parker and Stone's five-minute Internet hit The Spirit of Christmas while Groening launched The Simpsons as one-minute segments in between scenes of The Tracey Ullman Show.